temporal sovereignty in Italy, the historical
importance of Ravenna comes to an end. We have seen that in the autumn
of the most famous year save that of the birth of Our Lord,
Charlemagne had visited Ravenna and had spent seven days in the city.
Once more he was to visit it, and that upon his return journey
northward in May 801. From this time Ravenna ceases to be of any
significance in the history of Europe. The pass it held was no longer
of importance, for the barbarian invasions were at an end, and a new
road into Italy over the Apennines was coming into use, the Via
Francigena, the way of the Franks. As the port upon the sea which was
the fault between East and West it, too, ceased to exist; for East and
West were no longer of any real importance the one to the other, and
already the alteration of the coast line, which was one day to leave
the old seaport some miles from the shore, had begun.

The history of Ravenna, her importance in the history of Europe and
Italy, thus comes to an end with the appearance of Charlemagne and the
resurrection of the West. The ancient and beautiful city which had
played so great a part in the fortunes of the empire, which had, as it
were, twice been its birthplace and twice its tomb, herself passes
into oblivion when that empire, Holy now and Roman still, rises again
and in the West with the crowning of Charlemagne in S. Peter's Church
upon Christmas Day in the year of Our Lord 800. With her subsequent
story, interesting to us mainly in two of its episodes--the apparition
of Dante and the incident of 1512--I shall deal when I come to
consider the Mediaeval and Renaissance city.

But in fact we always think of Ravenna as a city of the Dark Age, and
in that we are right. She is a tomb, the tomb of the old empire, and
like the sepulchre outside the gates of Jerusalem, that was Arimathean
Joseph's, she held during an appalling interval of terror and doubt
the most precious thing in the world, to be herself utterly forgotten
in the morning of the resurrection. And surely to one who had
approached her in the dawn, while it was yet dark, of the ninth
century, of mediaeval Europe that is, her words would have been those
of the angels so long ago: _Non est hic; sed surrexit_. While to us
to-day she would say: _Venite et videte locum ubi positus erat
Dominus_.

XI

THE CATHOLIC CHURCHES OF THE FIFTH CENTURY

THE CATHEDRAL, BAPTISTERY, ARCIVESCOVADO, S. AGATA, S. PIETRO
MAGGIORE,